Quote of the Day

"Upheavals come suddenly, unexpectedly, and often catastrophically. Whenever they come, however they come, they forever alter the settled terrain that once was our life. Embedded within us are physical, spiritual, and psychological layers that make up our interior landscape. When upheavals come, they alter every layer with varying degrees of destruction that sometimes take a lifetime to unearth. 

Imagine for a minute that you are the landscape. The upheaval thrusts itself mercilessly through the very center of who you are. The abrading of granite. The crumbling of limestone. The crashing of boulders as they tumble down around you, shattering to pieces. You feel all of that, every grinding moment of it. Your stomach drops, your head spins, and you watch in helpless horror as the innermost parts of your life lie on the surface, exposed to the elements. 

The deafening noise is the sound of upheaval as it forces its way through every stratified layer that lies within you. Your body, mind, emotions, all these layers are displaced. They are folded or pushed upward or thrust over each other. The social layers of your life are also shaken. And the spiritual layers that once seemed such bedrock certainties, they're shaken, too. 

Who of us can survive the shock and aftershocks of such earth-shaking experiences? Who of us has the strength to sift through the emotional rubble of the resulting devastation? Who of us has the courage to face the future where other upheavals may await us? 

Meanwhile, where is God in all of this? Didn't He see the upheaval coming? Couldn't He have prevented it? Or at least warned us of it? 

Much the way pressure within the earth thrusts rock formations through its crust to create mountains, the seismic pressure of these unanswered questions creates sudden and sometimes terrifying upheavals in our faith. 

To this bare and broken rock, God comes. 

There, the weathering grace of God begins its work, wearing granite into soil, planting windblown seeds into barren slopes, bringing life out of lifelessness, beauty out of ugliness. 

Season after season, the work continues. 

In time, God turns the most terrifying of eruptions into the most majestic of mountains, the most tragic of earthquakes into the most idyllic of landscapes. 

That is the unrelenting work of heaven, to make everything beautiful in its time." 

- Ken Gire 

Life As We Would Want It...Life As We Are Given It